Cozy Fiction

In March of 1926, Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher and her friend and collaborator, Lady Lucy Gerald, head off for several days to a stately home reputed to have the best grotto in the country. Working on a book of architectural follies, they plan to research and photograph it. Leaving her husband and young twins behind, Daisy is expecting a productive weekend at Appsworth Hall, with the only potential difficulty being keeping Lucy from offending the current owner, a manufacturer of plumbing products. Alas, it's not to be quite so simple.

In the summer of 1923, the Honorable Daisy Dalrymple makes what should be an uneventful research trip to the Museum of Natural History quite an eventful day - with her nephew, Derek, and her soon-to-be stepdaughter, Belinda, in tow. But as she interviews the various curators for her article on the museums of London, she soon discovers that the Museum of Natural History is a hothouse of professional rivalry and jealousy.

Jill Gardner, the owner of Coffee, Books, and More, has been suckered into playing a '20s flapper in murder/dinner theater. Though it is for charity.... Of course everyone is expecting a "dead" body at the dress rehearsal...but this one isn't acting! It turns out the main suspect is the late actor's conniving girlfriend, Sherry...who also happens to be the ex-wife of Jill's main squeeze. Sherry is definitely a master manipulator...but is she a killer? Jill may discover the truth only when the curtain comes up on the final act...and by then it may be far too late.

Lola Pink is all shades of concerned about the state of her wedding plans when her world is shaken as someone close to Dane Clark - her billionaire fiance - goes missing. When the news of a kidnapping rocks the Clark Castle, Lola finds herself entwined in a mystery that could require a trip down memory lane. However, a missing-persons report is not the only thing on Lola's plate.

Hope's schedule is already jam packed with recipe testing and shameless plugs for her food blog as she rushes off to attend a spring garden tour in the charming town of Jefferson, Connecticut. Unfortunately, it isn't the perfectly arranged potted plants that grab her attention - it's the bloody body of reviled real estate agent Peaches McCoy.... One of the tour guests committed murder, and all eyes are on Hope's older sister, Claire Dixon - who, at best, saw Peaches as a professional rival. And suspicions really heat up when another murder occurs the following night.

When Inspector Shanti de Silva moves with his English wife, Jane, to his new post in the sleepy hill town of Nuala, he anticipates a more restful life than police work in the big city entails. However an arrogant plantation owner with a lonely wife, a crusading lawyer, and a death in suspicious circumstances present him with a riddle that he will need all his experience to solve. Set on the exotic island of Ceylon (modern Sri Lanka) in the 1930s, Trouble in Nuala is an entertaining and absorbing mystery spiced with humor and a colorful cast of characters.

When Holly White's fiancé cancels their Christmas Eve wedding with less than two weeks to go, Holly heads home with a broken heart. Lucky for her, home in historic Mistletoe, Maine is magical during Christmastime - exactly what the doctor prescribed. Except her plan to drown her troubles in peppermints and snickerdoodles is upended when local grouch and president of the Mistletoe Historical Society, Margaret Fenwick, is bludgeoned and left in the sleigh display at Reindeer Games, Holly's family tree farm.

In England in the late 1920s, the Honourable Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher, on a convalescent trip to the countryside, goes to visit three old school friends in the area. Daisy and her husband Alec - Detective Chief Inspector Alec Fletcher, of Scotland Yard - go for a Sunday lunch with Daisy’s friends, where one of the women mentions a wine cellar below their house, which remains curiously locked, no key to be found. Alec offers to pick the lock, but when he opens the door, what greets them is not a cache of wine but the stench of a long-dead body.

When Lucy Berberian quits her Philadelphia law firm and heads home to Ocean Crest, she knows what she's getting - the scent of funnel cake, the sight of the wooden roller coaster, and the tastes of her family's Mediterranean restaurant. Lucy could do without Heather Banks, though. The Gucci-toting ex-cheerleader is still as nasty as she was back in high school...and she's just taken over as the local health inspector. Just minutes after eating at the Kebab Kitchen - where she's tallied up a whole list of bogus violations - she falls down dead in the street.

If Emily has learned anything from her past as a 911 operator, it's to stay calm during stressful situations. But that's a tall order when one of her regulars, Georgia Treetor, goes missing. Georgia never skips morning cappuccinos with her knitting circle. Her pals fear the worst - especially Lois, a close friend who recently moved to town. As evening creeps in, Emily and the ladies search for Georgia at home. And they find her - murdered among a scattering of stale donuts....

Left alone at Marlow House with Sadie and Max, Walt expects Danielle and Lily to return by the end of the week. When they don't, he begins to wonder what happened to them. The ghost of Marlow House doesn't scare six-year-old Evan MacDonald. When the child sneaks into the house in the middle of the night, seeking Walt's help, the resident spirit learns something has happened to Danielle and Lily. Can a ghost confined to Marlow House and a pint-sized medium bring the people they love home?

When the body of a renowned British archeologist is found inside a sarcophagus he was bringing back from a dig in Egypt, Redmond and Haze must determine who aboard the Sea Witch had reason to want him dead. The method of murder suggests it was someone familiar with the funerary rites of the Ancient Egyptians, casting suspicion on members of the expedition, but there were others aboard the vessel who might have harbored a grudge against Blake Upton for reasons unconnected to the dig.

Single mom Hayley Powell is barely keeping her leaking roof over her head in Bar Harbor, Maine, when her boss at the Island Times gives her a new assignment - taking over the paper's food column. Hayley's not sure she has the chops - she's an office manager, not a writer, even if her friends clamor for her mouth-watering potluck dishes. But the extra income is tempting, and Hayley's chatty first column is suddenly on everyone's menu - with one exception.

After leaving a decade ago, Angie Curtis has been called back to Harbor Haven, Maine, by her grandmother, Charlotte, who raised her following her mother's disappearance when she was a child. Her mother has been found, and now the question of her whereabouts has sadly become the mystery of her murder. The bright spot in Angie's homecoming is reuniting with Charlotte, who has started her own needlepointing business with a group called the Mainely Needlepointers.

Moving four times in five years has honed air force wife Ellie Avery's packing and unpacking skills. But moving with a newborn daughter and husband Mitch in tow, during a heat wave, is enough to make her turn to chocolate for comfort. And when Ellie finds a local environmentalist dead on the side of the road, her instincts tell her this was no accident.

As the new proprietor of Webb's Glass Shop, Savannah has been appointed to fill her late father's shoes as a judge for the Spinnaker Arts Festival, held in downtown St. Petersburg, Florida. With her innovative glass works, the clear winner is Megan Loyola, a student of Savannah's former mentor. But when Megan doesn't show up to accept her $25,000 award, rumors start flying. And when Savannah discovers the woman's dead body on festival grounds, the police immediately suspect her of murder. Savannah must sort through the broken pieces of glass scattered around the victim for clues....

Addie's getting into the spirit for the upcoming Charity Auction - especially since she's got an 1843 copy of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol to donate. Her former colleagues at the Boston Public Library have confirmed that its worth runs toward the high five figures, which should help with the new pediatric wing. Her mood darkens, though, when a visitor from the past appears - Jonathan Hemingway, the father of her late fiance. His presence stirs up sad memories for Addie, but also has her fuming when Jonathan runs off for a lunchtime liaison with Teresa Lang.

When Marley McKinney's aging cousin, Jimmy, is hospitalized with pneumonia, she agrees to help run his pancake house while he recovers. With its rustic interior and syrupy scent, the Flip Side Pancake House is just as she pictured it - and the surly chef is a wizard with crêpes. Marley expects to spend a leisurely week or two in Wildwood Cove, the quaint, coastal community where she used to spend her summers, but then Cousin Jimmy is found murdered, sprawled on the rocks beneath a nearby cliff.

The one rule bookshop owner and widow Penelope Thornton-McClure has given ghostly, hard-boiled PI Jack Shepard is to not haunt the customers. But when the hot, young author Angel Stark arrives at the store to promote her latest true-crime novel, Jack can hardly contain himself. Angel's book is an unsolved mystery about a debutante found strangled to death, and it's filled with juicy details that point a finger at a number of people in the deb's high-society circle. But when the author winds up dead, too - in precisely the same way - Pen is fast on the case...which means Jack is, too.

Harlow Torrent, Slip Witch, is just trying to hold everything together. All she wants to do is keep the missing-presumed-snarky Aunt Cass' business running, help the moms with their new bakery, and maybe spend a minute or two with her boyfriend, Jack. She's trying not to think about the possibility she has a spell cast upon her, one that may be more powerful than any of them can understand.